the mid-1960s. Those travelling to Mangalore and other towns and cities in the north for employment and commerce had to go by train, or cross the Mogral River by ferry and then board a bus. When the construction of a bridge over the Mogral River was completed in 1964, connecting Kasaragod to Mangalore by road, it also opened new economic opportunities for people on both sides of the river. Broad gauge Indian Railways tracks run almost parallel to the National Highway from north to south. Passenger and goods trains has crossed the region for more than a century, since the then-Madras Railways opened a railway line between Kasaragod and Kumbla on 17 November 1906. In the early decades of the 20th century, there was a railway station in Kudlu, which was later moved a kilometer south to CPCRI.No trains stop there today. History The Mogral Puthur area was earlier known as just Puthur. The name of Mogral, the adjoining village to the north, was added to its name during the British era following complaints that mail was being re-directed to the town of Puttur, now in Karnataka, located roughly 50 kilometers to the east. The village used to house a police outpost before Independence. The first post office was established in Kudlu in 1940. Mogral Puthur was designated as a panchayat in the early 1970s. The first meeting of the newly formed body was held on 8 February 1971. C.M. Abdulla was the first president. Gulf Migration Like much of the Malabar region, remittances from Persian Gulf countries form a major source of income for families in the area. Labour migration to the Persian Gulf started in the 1950s and increased rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, more than a thousand from the Puthur village alone, nearly all of them men, are employed in the Gulf countries. Commerce and Agriculture Until the 1970s, agriculture and petty trading were the primary economic activities in the area. There were also several fishing families. Men moved to places as far away as Ceylon, Calcutta, Visakhapatnam, Mumbai and Bangalore, as well as the neighbouring regions in Dakshina Kannada and Kodagu, as traders and labourers. Like most other parts of Kerala, coconut is the most widely cultivated plantation crop in Mogral Puthur. The panchayat is also home to one of the largest coconut and plantation crops research centres in the world. Rice, peas, water